Frances Nguyen

Bio:

Frances Nguyen is a freelance writer and digital communications professional. She manages social media for the Women’s Media Center and for its journalism project Women Under Siege, and co-produces the Instagram project @todayinherstory.

Women around the world continue to struggle not only with draconian laws that deny them ownership of their own bodies, but also the threat of hard-won rights being rolled back. Here, we take a look at some of the places around the world that are playing the long game for abortion reform.

Many discussions about the concerns of working-class people have overlooked a huge group within their ranks: women working in restaurants, hotels, and private homes who are uniquely vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean lies the tiny, remote island of Nauru, which has come under scrutiny recently by the media and human rights groups. The Australian government, which provides direct aid to Nauru, uses the island to hold asylum seekers who have traveled to Australia by boat.

WMC Women Under Siege hosted a Twitter chat on June 1 with Amanda Sperber, a freelance foreign correspondent whose comprehensive coverage of rape in South Sudan has been published by outlets like Vice and Foreign Policy.

On May 26, WMC Women Under Siege hosted a Twitter chat with Karen Naimer, director of the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights’ program on sexual violence in conflict. We talked about methods of gathering and documenting forensic evidence in what are probably the world’s most difficult environments: war zones.

Back in November, global attention shifted for a brief moment from apocalyptic breaking news cycles just long enough for us to have an honest discourse on sexualized violence, thanks to the campaign for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. This month, we’ve been given that kind of opportunity again.